


Certain Misapprehensions

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Didn't Know They Were Dating, Embarrassment, Everyone Thinks They're Together (kind of), Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, One-Sided Relationship, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 01:19:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5892577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake thinks he’s single; Avon doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Certain Misapprehensions

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by aralias, first-reader elviaprose
> 
> You know how B/A is sort of mirror-verse K/S? That's certainly not all it is, but it's in the room. There's a K/S fic, 'Brilliance, or the Necessity of Precision' by NayNymic (http://ksarchive.com/viewstory.php?sid=1011), where Spock (and many, many of their friends) believe that he and Kirk are in a relationship, and Kirk is totally unaware of this. I like this fic because of the effects the unusual premise enables it to achieve, and I wanted to try and see if I could get that here. I think my version stretches credulity a little more (I think this is more plausible as A Thing That Could Happen To People than my beta does), perhaps (Avon's Weirdness excuses less than Spock's being an actual alien), and I opted ultimately not to go down the angst route (an odd choice on my part, given that I like the angst in the original--I just felt like it would be silly, in a B/A version, perhaps because this pairing is already replete with more legitimate sources of angst). It's only ever going to be a Puff Piece/Lesser Work, but I'm ok with that.

“Could I come in?” Cally asked when Blake opened the door to her.

Blake stood to the side to let her pass. The door sighed closed behind her. “Is there a problem?”

Cally shook her head. “I’m not sure. Blake—do you consider yourself to be unattached? ‘Single’, I think, is the term you would use.”

Blake gave her a bemused look. He understood, without having to think about it, that Cally wasn’t asking out of romantic interest in him. There wasn’t anything like that between them, and her tone was almost wary.

“Well—yes.” Blake half-laughed, reaching up to rub his neck. “I don’t have anyone waiting patiently for me back on Earth or anything like that. Why?”

Cally let out a long breath. “I was afraid you would say that. I am not certain it was right of me to come to you, but there are things I think you should know.”

“Well, what are they?” Blake asked, impatient, taking up the cup of coffee he’d been drinking before she came in.

“That Avon believes you are in a relationship.”

“Does he?” Blake said, blinking, not sure why Avon’s easily corrected misapprehension about Blake’s personal life should alarm Cally, or how it could have arisen. “Who with?” He took a sip of his drink.

“With _him_ ,” Cally said.

Blake spat out his coffee inelegantly. Cally tactfully did not comment—simply looked around the room, found, and handed him a tissue.

“Thanks,” Blake said, mopping his chin. “All right, I think you’d better start at the beginning.”

***

*HALF AN HOUR EARLIER*

Avon swept into the medical bay. Cally knew he was annoyed by the jagged clatter of his boots alone, which indicated too fast and clipped a stride. She wondered if Avon needed something, whether he was coming to take his annoyance out on her, or whether he simply wanted to complain. Surprisingly often, Cally found he did come to her for a sympathetic ear. Avon didn’t quite present his displays of temper as requests for commiseration and support, but he could rant it out with the best of them, and seemed to subside somewhat after disgorging his ire.

“What’s wrong?” Cally asked. She was putting away some of the new medical supplies he and Blake had acquired down on the planet (there were some surprising lacunae in the medical bay’s inventory, which she was discovering as they went along), and her back was to him.

“What isn’t?” Avon snapped, flipping the door of a cabinet open with a careless turn of his wrist so that it slammed against its neighbor, and not bothering to shut it again after he got out his headache patch. He stripped off the patch’s paper backing with a special violence and crumpled the refuse in his fist as though it had insulted his mother.

“Unbelievable,” he murmured under his breath. Cally waited patiently for him to tell her _what_ was unbelievable.

When she didn’t prompt him (which seemed to additionally annoy Avon), he leaned against the counter, smacked the pad on his hand, waited for the drugs to kick in and sighed. At an obnoxious volume.

Still Cally refused to repeat herself. He was a grown man. He could ask for what he wanted, and if he couldn’t, he probably didn’t deserve it. She was a guerilla fighter, not some cooing, anthropomorphized font of feminine sympathy for Avon and the rat’s nest of his issues.

She felt a little more kindly towards Avon when he finally did speak, because it then became clear that the topic he was brooding on was delicate, and that as much as anything, he hadn’t known how to broach it, or _wanted_ to discuss the matter. Additionally, Avon was concerned on someone else’s behalf as much as his own, which was unusual for him (Cally liked Avon, she just refused to credit him with virtues he didn’t possess) and somewhat winning: behavior she thought it best to encourage in him.

“Is there something medically wrong with Blake?” Avon asked. “My usual accusations of soft-headedness or madness stand, of course. But beyond that.”

“What do you mean?” Cally asked, turning to look at him and finding him staring at the closed door rather than looking at her.

“I mean, to your knowledge,” Avon said after a moment, “have Blake’s experiences under torture, or his conditioning, caused him significant, lasting physical or psychological damage? You would know, if anyone other than I would. And I,” he said with a touch of bitterness, “have not been told anything of the kind.”

“No, not to my knowledge.” Cally wondered why Avon thought he’d be likely to hear that sort of thing from Blake. “Though that is a rather private subject. I wouldn’t expect him to mention it, unless it stood to affect our work. Why does it concern you?”

“I’m afraid it touches me very nearly,” Avon said dryly. “Or rather it doesn’t. That is the whole problem.” He smiled unpleasantly. “You will, of course, mention this to no one?”

Cally gave him a pointed look.

“No,” Avon said with a slight sigh. “I suppose I needn’t have asked. Well, then. The fact is that, although Blake and I have been together for some time, he refuses to initiate sex.”

Avon rubbed his fingers over each other, smoothing the headache pad down absently, giving some purpose to the nervous tic.

“I wanted to determine whether I was on the right track about his conditioning being to blame. He refuses to respond to prompting on this point, so it’s difficult to say. I don’t much like the idea of broaching such a delicate topic in ignorance. But I’m so thoroughly out of patience that I may have to.”

Cally blinked at him. “You and Blake are … together?”

Avon regarded her with some confusion. “Obviously. You’re in our company frequently, you must have seen as much.” His expression turned a little snidely amused. “I’ve never thought you unobservant.”

Cally ignored that insult. Avon settled into a good round of bitching about Blake—which she _had_ known to be one of his favorite activities.

“I understand why he wants to take this slowly—to respect my boundaries. And I appreciate that he acknowledges my recent loss. It’s all fairly endearing, actually,” Avon admitted with a slight smile, which dropped, “but it is also becoming ridiculous. Just last night, down on that planet—”

Here it was. Cally had known he couldn’t hold out on telling her what he’d come in to complain about in the first place forever. She was surprised he’d lasted this long.

“When Jenna had to move off-station for thirty-six hours, we were stranded with limited funds. We were forced to share a bed. A practical enough arrangement under the circumstances, though we’ve never slept in the same room before.”

Avon looked torn between his desire to complain and his desire to reveal no personal information whatsoever. The former impulse won, because ultimately Avon was ruled more by greed than by shame. He had, after all, attempted to embezzle millions, and wasn’t very chagrined about either the attempt or its failure.

“I—touched his arm, and he looked—not unpleased. And then he said ‘goodnight, Avon’, rolled over and went to sleep. He wasn’t exhausted, we weren’t at odds. It doesn’t make sense.” For the first time in Cally’s experience, Avon looked completely baffled. “I had to _share a bed_ with him, and nothing!”

Avon pitched his paper ball at the bin and frowned when it ricocheted off the side and landed on the floor. He did not stoop to pick it up. (Cally rolled her eyes.)

“On the London the suppressants killed everyone’s sex drives, and then of course it took some time for the drugs to drain out of our systems. Then I presumed he wasn’t approaching me in that respect because of the considerations I mentioned, and because we weren’t yet sure of one another. In general I don’t enjoy sex outside of fairly secure relationships either. And I’ll admit, I was initially deeply ambivalent about our connection. But by now he can hardly claim we’re not committed to one another.”

Cally’s eyebrow rose at that—she didn’t know what evidence Avon was marshaling to that judgment—but Avon continued, lost in his own rant.

“And Blake keeps injuring himself, which doesn’t help. I’ve tried to tell him not to expose himself to physical risk without crudely spelling out this aspect of the problem, but subtlety is apparently lost on him. I’ve waited months for a window in which he and I are both in perfect health. If one more back-water rustic tortures Blake, I swear I’ll bomb his or her planet from orbit.”

“Blake would very likely have something to say about that,” Cally reminded Avon dryly.

“Blake would be far too busy to say anything,” Avon assured her shortly. “Or at least he should be. He’s well at the moment, and yet. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. I’ve practically thrown myself at him. It’s humiliating. On Tuesday I sat in his room for an hour in a dressing gown and nothing else, talking about _work_. Then he said he was headed to bed, and that he'd see me in the morning. He didn't ask me to stay, not even when I said 'I suppose I'll go to my room, then’. My tone was hardly ambiguous. So,” Avon made a grand gesture at the mess of his relationship, “it is something else. Something I am failing to see.” He gave Cally an odd look. “You really had no idea we were together?

“None at all,” Cally said, though somehow it didn’t surprise her that she hadn’t heard about Avon’s apparently active romantic life before now. He was more likely to speak of that sort of thing in an outburst of frustration than in casual conversation. “Is it a recent development?”

Avon began to look confused. “No. We’ve been together since the London, where he asked me to throw in my lot with him _personally_. He asked for my loyalty, _to him_. I said I’d had worse offers. Often when we're down on a planet together he introduces me as his partner. Surely you’ve noticed that?”

A truly awkward possibility began to coalesce in Cally’s mind. “Do you have much non-sexual physical contact?” she asked, her voice brisk, as though she were simply trying to help him define the problem.

Anyone would be angry to learn they weren’t actually _in_ a relationship they valued; Avon would be angry and completely humiliated. Possibly he would be sufficiently humiliated to part company with the lot of them, and to eliminate any witnesses to his shame. A category that unfortunately, as of this conversation, included her.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’ve seen that!” Avon said, properly irate now. “He touches other people at times as well, but not inappropriately. And it means nothing. He and I have an agreement. I wouldn’t sit that close to Vila, let alone get him beverages!”

“Blake does that for you as well,” Cally said, thinking aloud. Blake did hasten to return any slight favor of Avon’s, true. He’d said to her once, not long after he and Avon had had a pleasant, low-voiced, almost intimate conversation on the flight deck, that he thought Avon might finally be opening up to him, feeling part of the team.

“Well naturally,” Avon said, exasperated. “He even gave me a back massage a few weeks ago.” Avon snorted. “I would rather walk through fire than touch someone I wasn’t in a relationship with like that. It is of course different with a professional masseur or something of that nature,” Avon said with a shrug. “Not that we have many opportunities to patronize professionals of that ilk, under the present fearless leadership.”

There was a wry turn to that criticism that Cally suddenly realized was fondness. She’d never recognized this element of Avon’s grousing, but it was present. Avon didn’t simply believe that he and Blake were locked into some form of alliance that wasn’t providing him with such a union’s standard benefits. Avon liked Blake. Avon might care deeply about Blake. And the more involved he was, the worse it would be for him (and thus for everyone else) if he were mistaken about what was going on.

“True,” Cally said carefully. “I have certainly seen you touching one another in a companionable manner. But do you customarily engage in more romantic gestures? Do you, for example, kiss?”

Avon looked like he’d just unexpectedly tasted something sour. “You mean outside of sex, which I’ve been at pains to explain to you I’m not having? Cally. I often have to hold Blake in dangerous situations, and in public. That is more than sufficiently demonstrative. I’m not going to be ridiculous about this, or crude.”

“What should be crude about kissing?” Cally asked, baffled, wondering if this was some personal peccadillo of Avon’s.

Avon rolled his eyes. “Perhaps nothing, on Auron. On Earth, kissing’s rather gone out as a romantic gesture. Unless one is an Outsider or a Delta. Well-reared Alphas don’t. We consider it degrading. And Blake is culturally Alpha, his political convictions notwithstanding. What?” He said in response to Cally’s serious, worried look.

“Clearly I don’t understand Terran norms,” she said, still at a loss as to whether she understood them so poorly that she’d failed to pick up on a relationship quite evident to her human crewmates. But then surely, even if she found it not impossible that Blake would be as private as Avon had hitherto been about this, Jenna, Vila or Gan would have mentioned the state of affairs?

But now Avon had begun to look worried himself. She watched the doubt that was likely evident in her own expression pass into his. Avon frowned. Opened his mouth to tentatively voice a half-formed, new-born possibility. Closed it again.

“Excuse me,” he said. His voice was unusually quiet, and his expression vague. He turned to go.

“No, wait – Avon. You’ve reminded me,” Cally said quickly, before Avon managed to leave (no doubt intending to interview Blake about his suspicions). “There’s something wrong with the teleport wiring. It was playing up while you and Blake were away—it wouldn’t pull you back, at first. I told Blake, and he said that any fault in the system could be catastrophic, even life-threatening. He wanted you to run a full diagnostic before we needed to use the teleport again. I offered to look at it myself, but Blake said that he only trusted you to do it and that he’d speak to you about it tomorrow if I didn’t see you before.”

“How very like Blake,” Avon said, his eyes still narrow, “not to think that requires immediate attention. We could have cause to abandon ship at a moment’s notice. It might be nothing, but determining that shouldn’t be put off. I’ll go now.” And talk to Blake immediately afterwards, he didn’t have to add.

“How long do you expect it will take you?” Cally asked, keeping her tone casual with an effort. She had suspected that Avon would take a threat to one of the ship’s primary systems seriously, and was relieved to be proved right.

“Oh—perhaps three hours,” Avon said, distracted by both the task before him and a more personal concern, which was painted on his face and only getting more evident as it started to eat deeper into him.

There wasn’t anything she could do to alleviate his worries at present. Cally waited until she’d heard the sound of his boots (their tread heavy now, as though he were walking through deep snow, or lost in thought and dragging his feet) echoing off the corridor that housed the med bay and onto the next. And when she was sure he wouldn’t see or hear her do it, she made haste to Blake.

***

Blake sat on his bed, his elbows propped on his knees and his hands knit under his chin. His brow was as wrinkled as his tunic. He stared out in front of him as Cally spoke, and continued looking ahead of himself, at nothing specific, when she’d finished.

“I believe he will come to you, when my distraction has run its course.”

“Yes,” Blake said, “I expect he will. To try and delicately ask whether I think I’m on the market. He’ll be more than a little furious if the answer is incorrect, so I suppose I’d better take the next two and a half hours to think hard about whether I’d like to be.”

“And if you do wish to be in such a relationship, about whether you already knew yourself to be in one.”

Cally knew Blake wouldn’t lie to Avon to keep him on-board, if he honestly wasn’t romantically interested in Avon at all. But if Blake _were_ interested, he might well be evasive about how long he had been, for everyone’s sake.

“Right,” Blake said shortly.

“I’ll leave you to consider the matter,” Cally said. “I won’t mention this to the others, of course.”

Blake looked up at her, surprised. “I never thought you would.”

“Avon said almost the same thing,” Cally observed with a half-smile. Obviously, in this case, she had gone behind Avon’s back to speak to Blake––but only to spare him and Blake both unnecessary pain. She didn’t feel herself to have been in the wrong.

“I want you to know he’s not deluded,” Blake said, the sound of his voice stopping Cally as she reached the door, before she’d managed to open it. “I can see exactly what he thought was happening, now that I think of it. I suppose—” Blake sighed, and shook his head, “I suppose I do treat him in a way most people where we’re from would find …  suggestive, at least.” Blake stood up, paced a few steps, and turned towards her. “And I can’t deny that I have—thought about this. Wanted it, even. He’s not _mad_ , Cally,” Blake stressed. Protecting Avon from ridicule was, apparently, rather important to him.

“No,” Cally agreed. Here was the proof of that Blake did care about Avon, evidently quite deeply. But she doubted that would be enough to satisfy Avon, to salve his pride or, potentially, his heartbreak, if Blake had to tell Avon that he’d been mistaken. If this friendly care was all Blake felt for him.

“I didn’t think it meant anything,” Blake continued, mostly to himself, “given all the acrimony between us. I spent a lot of time mixing outside my grade—I assumed he had too. Or that his behavior was just capricious. Idiosyncratic. It _is_ , in other respects.”

Cally returned to Blake, squeezed his shoulder, and left him. She hoped for the best, with no real certainty that the situation would play out well. Despite appearances and Avon’s threats to the contrary, it was now evident to Cally that Avon had firmly accepted his place on the Liberator. But he’d done so on certain terms: as Blake’s partner. If he wasn’t that, if didn’t _have_ Blake, he might see things very differently.

***

The door chimed, and Blake drew in a breath. “Come,” he said, standing.

Avon. Of course it was. He walked into Blake’s room warily, surveying furniture he’d seen a score of times with a suspicious eye.

“Blake,” Avon began, “are you… under the impression… No, let's put it this way: are you currently _with_ anyone, Blake?” He simultaneously wasted no time and, however much he must have thought it over in the past hours, was obviously unsure how to ask.

“What a question,” Blake said, deliberately keeping his voice soft. “I’m obviously with you, aren’t I?” He’d changed into a soft white shirt and left the tie at the top loose. He’d also changed into soft, fawn colored trousers. He looked inviting. Touchable.

“Yes,” Avon said, hesitantly, “physically, obviously you are. We are both in this room together. But I—”

“Physically,” Blake said, interrupting him. “Yes, now that is a point.” He stepped to Avon, cupping Avon’s face in his hand. Avon’s eyes widened. Darkened.

“I’ve wanted this for a long, long time,” Blake murmured, inclining his head to kiss Avon thoroughly.

When he pulled back for air, Avon snarled, “What kept you?” He pushed Blake back to the bed, not interested in receiving an answer to his own question at present.

***

Later, when Avon lay on Blake’s pillow with his eyes closed, grinning smugly, he remembered he still didn’t have an answer.

“You know I almost—” Avon began. Then he laughed at himself, shaking his head. “Never mind. Half an hour ago, I had nearly convinced myself of something idiotic. Out of interest, _why_ did you make me wait so long to have you?”

Blake winced. He had, at times, thought that working with Avon, with all its emotional intensity, situationally-enforced co-dependence and attendant stressful negotiations, was rather like being in a relationship—only without the sex, or several of the other perks. It wouldn’t do to bring that up. But he did have to face this conversation out.

Avon’s lazy post-coital drawl snagged at Blake, working its way into his affections, making Blake think he’d _hate_ to lose Avon. But he knew he stood to do it, despite having spent the last hours trying to carefully stage-manage this encounter, and despite Avon’s apparently wanting this relationship enough to dismiss and rationalize all manner of inconsistencies on Blake’s part.

Avon’s voice grew more serious. “I was attempting to be realistic about your conditioning-trauma, or whatever it was that was holding you back. But you wouldn't even tell me. I was prepared to accept that we were never going to have a traditional sexual relationship, but it seemed as though you didn't trust that I would be able to make that compromise, and thus refused to so much as explain the situation to me—though obviously that couldn’t have gone on indefinitely. In other respects you’ve proven quite capable of this sort of relationship negotiation, which made your reticence on this point all the more inexplicable.”

Avon looked determined. Blake felt a sharp stab of tenderness for him, even though Avon was, technically, berating him. He felt he had to interrupt before Avon said anything else, anything that Avon would feel exposed him further, but Avon saw Blake open his mouth and shook his head. “Let me finish. I only bring it up now because I think it could be important to clarify what went wrong. I’ll work within the parameters available to us, Blake, but I won’t be shut out again. It’s neither efficacious nor fair to expect me to tolerate it. So: what was the problem?”

Avon also apparently liked Blake enough to want him even if they were unable to have sex—which Avon had very clearly been desperate for. The fondness and vulnerability that implied was wrenching.

Blake gathered Avon in his arms to prevent his storming out when the time came. Though this was rather forward, given that theirs was not a culture much given to non-sexual touch and that Blake wasn’t in any condition to initiate another round yet, Avon allowed it. In fact, he seemed almost to welcome it.

“Avon,” Blake began, “I didn’t realize we were in a relationship.”

Avon stiffened in his arms. “Excuse me?”

“If I’d known—”

“Let go of me,” Avon said sharply, digging his nails onto Blake’s back to force the issue.

“No,” Blake insisted. “Avon, if I’d known we were in a relationship, I’d have been thrilled. I’d have fucked you the minute the drugs drained from my system. I’d have slept easier. I’d have felt better about the whole shape and prospects of my life. If I’d _known_ . Because we _have been_ , Avon. Nothing you felt and nothing we did was a lie. You’ve known it, and I’ve wanted it, and now we both know, all right?”

Avon had eased his grip while Blake spoke, and Blake breathed, thinking this might, _might_ actually work. He was counting on Avon’s greed ultimately winning out over his shame. Counting on Avon’s wanting what he’d thought he already enjoyed enough to get over the embarrassment of having been in part mistaken about that.

“And if I’d known we were in a relationship,” Blake finished, “I’d have been a good deal nicer to you, for a bloody start.”

Avon looked at Blake again, seeming a bit bemused. “You’re fairly pleasant to me now. You put up with more insubordination from me than any other ship commander would, you are relatively affectionate, and given that we communicate via argument, I hardly find those disagreements profitless. I don't require additional civilities.”

Blake found that rather touching, somehow.

“All the same,” Blake insisted, “I would have tried to be significantly kinder to you, dearest.”

Avon’s face flickered strangely. “Endearments are for Deltas,” he said.

Blake shrugged. “So, I’m an iconoclast. Do you despise them?”

Avon looked a little perplexed. “Try once more,” he said, and Blake wanted to laugh at the concentration in his expression—Avon treated this like a scientific experiment.

“If you like, dearest,” Blake said, filling the word with quiet fondness.

“No,” Avon said after a moment. “I—don’t hate that. In private, of course.”

“Naturally,” Blake agreed with a smile. “That’s a good start. I think, Avon, that in time you could come ‘round to all kinds of radical obscenities. Lewd, gauche endearments. Kissing and touching when you’re not about to fuck. Passionate over-investment in what should be a straight-forward sexual alliance.”

“Stop that,” Avon said, looking irritable and unmistakably _interested_. His eyes were bright with it.

“For now,” Blake agreed. “Incidentally, since we are in a relationship, I might like you to be nicer to _me_ ,” he said wryly. Avon’s caustic tongue had, after all, convinced him that they weren’t even flirting, let alone doing anything more.

This request didn’t impress Avon. He wheeled out his most sarcastic tone. “I risk my life for you on a regular basis. What additional displays of romantic fidelity do you need?”

Blake—had to concede that. But even so. “You could be less hostile when you’re not saving my hide.”

Avon rolled his eyes. “Sometimes when you're so sexually frustrated you could scream, you do.”

Blake grinned at him. “Hopefully that won’t be a problem in future.”

“Not if you’ve started as you mean to go on,” Avon admitted. “There are, of course, non-sexual reasons you provoke me to the point of madness, but some of those are entwined with my liking you sufficiently to want to do this.” He made a lazy gesture at their activities. “As for the rest, you’ll have to be patient. I have no idea how to go about demonstrating the sweetness you apparently require of me. I expect I’ll find it difficult to learn.”

Blake now rolled _his_ eyes. “Don’t sulk. I clearly like you for you, or I wouldn’t be here. You can curb your acerbity a touch if you put your mind to it—frankly I’ll mind it less now that I know you don’t hate me and probably aren’t going to run out on me at a moment’s notice.”

“Well,” Avon said, squirming out of Blake’s embrace and settling onto his back again, “you might have guessed that much earlier. That’s the trouble with you, Blake—or one aspect of it, anyway. You’re deluded about the nature of our relationship because you aren’t very observant.” The fact that Avon was making a joke at Blake’s expense out of his own massive misapprehension (though as with the misapprehension itself—there was something in this way of putting it) said more about Avon’s capacity to recover from this than anything else could have done.

“Very true, dear,” Blake agreed in the same faux-earnest register. “Give me another few minutes and we can continue to make up for the time we lost to my obliviousness.”

“For a considerable while, I literally thought you’d never ask.”

Given that he was very busy for the rest of the evening, it took Avon some time to understand that Cally had realized his predicament, concocted a pretext to keep him busy, and then gone to tell Blake what had happened. This was humiliating, but it had brought about exactly the result he desired. Cally also wouldn’t tell Vila or Jenna (who would find it endlessly amusing), or Gan (who’d find it piteous). Given these mitigating circumstances, Avon supposed he would not, after all, find it necessary to destroy all witnesses. Still sufficiently deluded about his life to believe that his emotional entanglements were the sort of thing Cally wanted to hear all about, he resolved to continue telling her about them in future. Cally regretted that, but was largely pleased that they would all escape the misunderstanding with no greater catastrophe than this.


End file.
